Seth Shostak Quotes

Is E.T. out there? Well, I work at the SETI Institute. That's almost my name. SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. In other words, I look for aliens, and when I tell people that at a cocktail party, they usually look at me with a mildly incredulous look on their face. I try to keep my own face somewhat dispassionate.

Another random thing I do is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. And you may be familiar with the movie 'Contact,' which sort of popularized that. It turns out there are real people who go out and search for extraterrestrials in a very scientific way.

I actually think the chances that we'll find E.T. are pretty good.

First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.

We send messages all the time, free of charge. There's a big shell out there now, 80 light-years around us. A civilization only a little more advanced than we are can pick those things up.

SETI is probably the most important quest of our time , and it amazes me that governments and corporations are not supporting it sufficiently.

For many centuries, humans have speculated that there might be planetary systems around other stars and that there could be extraterrestrial life there and even intelligent being. However, those were simply speculations, and now we have evidence for the first part of these ideas.

Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it.

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.

I think the potential for man is so enormous, if we can stay alive long enough, we're going to be seeing a lot of what Star Trek is projecting.

This planet seems to be in such sorry shape. And I can't ever think about the rest of the universe without coming back home and thinking what the implications for life here would be if we were to really have some definitive proof of extraterrestrial life.

Most of the intelligence out there must be artificial intelligence. We keep looking for critters like us living on a planet like ours, where in fact the majority of the intelligence out there is not biological. That would be my argument.

Maybe the search for life shouldn't restrict attention to planets like Earth. Science fiction writers have other ideas: balloon-like creatures floating in the dense atmospheres of planets such as Jupiter, swarms of intelligent insects, nano-scale robots and more.

We can never prove that we're alone in the universe. But the Allen Telescope Array could prove that we're not.

It's just too egotistical to think that we are the only lifeform in the universe.

With 'Extinction Machine,' I wanted to start some conversations about whether we're alone in the universe and what that might mean.

I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves.

People quite often think of the question 'Are we alone in the universe?' in terms of other civilizations out there: life forms that have reached at least our level of technological development.

It's presumptuous for us to think we are the only beings in the cosmos.

Galactic plankton is undoubtedly out there, but it's statistically highly likely there's also another intelligent civilisation out there somewhere. Unfortunately, the distances and time differences are so great, communication might remain impossible.

I think obviously there is some kind of life form somewhere else. Whether it looks like the creature in 'Alien Autopsy,' I'm not sure.

Astrobiology is a great point of contact for science outreach. The public is naturally interested in extra-terrestrial life. Astrobiology provides an accessible point of access that leads to deeper questions.

Within the scientific community, there is healthy skepticism. And the question is, 'How do you ever get to a meaningful null result? How long and how hard do SETI scientists have to look for extraterrestrial intelligence and find nothing before they say, 'There is nothing. We are alone.'

Extraterrestrial intelligence could have sent DNA-seed packets out through space to plant life on hospitable planets such as earth.

We might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined. ... What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community?